Windswept

By Lynwood Shiva Sawyer

After a brutal Queens childhood and several struggling decades, MEGHAN JOYCE, 30s, has finally attained a fulfilling job and an ideal lover: the wryly eloquent corporate executive, THOMAS CATHERTON LOCKHART, an Englishman in his early 40s.

On their first anniversary, however, Thomas announces he wants nothing further to do with her. Devast

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hidden Pearl Books
• Release date: Nov 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733175012

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Goa

Randall Yearwood opened the door with his foot.

The action saved his life.

Five slugs from a silenced .22 tore through the wooden slats. Splinters blasted from the doorframe hurtled past him into the Indian night, the air moist from an onshore breeze.

He dove to the ground with agility surprising for a man nearing fifty.

In the split second he’d eased the door open, Yearwood glimpsed smoke curling from the closet at the back. Still prone, he fired his own weapon, an odd pistol the color of goldenrod and made of a Celazole, a space-age material. The weapon discharged with a loud CHUFF. Acrid smoke, smelling more like a welder’s torch than gunpowder, unfurled from the barrel like bluish spider silk.

Yearwood slithered toward the door with the caution of an aging athlete. His weight was close to two hundred pounds, mostly muscle, held in check by exercise and discipline. He pressed his body flat, grimacing as the damp sand ground into his tailored linen suit.

With a surgeon’s meticulousness, he extended his gun hand onto the cement stoop.

He fired three more times. CHUFF. CHUFF. CHUFF.

Wheezing grunts followed a sharp yelp. His bullets had struck their target.

Yearwood cautiously eased the door open with his pistol barrel.

A simple room. A bare incandescent bulb jittered from the uncertain electricity, illuminating an iron-frame bed draped with mosquito netting. Crude teak furniture.

His foe, still concealed behind the half-opened closet door, made no response other than the rasping grunts.

Yearwood wriggled backward on his stomach, dirt working its way into his salt-and-pepper beard.

The murmur of the surf blurred into the buzz of insects and faint strains of a celebration wafting from the outskirts of nearby Panjimi. The night was astonishingly dark, penetrated only by streaks of distant lightning and the glow from waves lit by phosphorescent plankton. The air was dense, redolent with the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine.

Yearwood’s breath came easily as he slowly rose, unhastened by either exertion or fear. Mugginess, not sweat, brought a sheen to his espresso-colored skin.

Something crashed through the underbrush behind him.

Yearwood dropped into a crouch, his pistol tracking the commotion.

A smile split his fierce concentration as a wild sow and three piglets broke through the bushes. They scurried back into the darkness,

Relieved, he brushed the sand from his beard and suit.

He circled stealthily around the stucco building, searching for an open window.

No movement nor even a sound from his adversary.

Yearwood paused. He resembled a philosopher, contemplating some obscure and perhaps frivolous problem rather than a professional assassin pursuing a man who wanted to kill him.

Only insects and bats stirred in the scattering of one-storey buildings – the staff and remaining guests had all gone into town for the festival.

He stooped beneath the far window, then jiggled the screen sash just enough to ensure the man inside would notice.

Leaping away, he awaited another hail of bullets.

Nothing.

He wiggled a log loose from its garden-border mooring, hefted it to his shoulder, then hurled it through the screen.

In the gap made through the curtains, Yearwood spotted his quarry, doubled up in the closet. He returned to the front of the bungalow and eased himself through the door.

●

Yearwood sprinted around the edge of the room, pistol at the ready. Taking a deep breath, he flung open the closet door and jammed his pistol into his victim’s temple.

Groaning softly, arms clutched around his middle, the man did not reach for the suppressor-equipped .22 that lay beside him.

Exit wounds had flared into a large crimson blossom on the back shoulder of his camouflage tunic. The man was darker-skinned than Yearwood, though his features had a distinctly Oriental cast. His coal-black hair lay in thick waves across his head. His face was full, the lips plump, and even in agony his eyes had a soft languor. His features made his age ambiguous. He might have been in his early thirties. Or maybe late forties. He certainly did not fit the image of a hardened guerrilla leader who had spent the last decade slogging through jungles evading helicopters and native trackers.

Though that was indeed who he was.

The man’s eyes flickered as he struggled to work his expression into a smirk. Agony won, forcing him to settle on a grimace.

It do not matter, the man wheezed. Money you people give bullshit government . . .

A slug had punctured one of his lungs. Maybe it had collapsed.

Yearwood’s expression softened, sympathetic in the knowledge that his enemy’s suffering was genuine. Nevertheless, he kept his pistol tightly aimed.

The man’s voice was barely louder than a whisper and his thick accent made his speech almost unintelligible.

Yearwood froze. What money, Jobim?

He drew closer, his face tensing. He drilled the pistol into Jobim’s temple.

General Maningrat seventeen million dollar. You company pay to kill our people. You piss it away. General never get it. The man chuckled hoarsely, the sound rattling in his chest. Never never never.

The blood-spumed coughing fit that followed was a small price to pay for the malice he derived from taunting Yearwood. Around Jobim’s neck was a knotted leather thong with some sort of ivory amulet. Obviously, the talisman’s protective power was bogus.

What are you talking about? How do you know who I work for?

Yearwood could no longer resist. He shoved his pistol into his belt and grabbed Jobim by the lapels. Blood from entrance wounds converged like crimson anemones across Jobim’s front.

Yearwood dragged him into the middle of the room.

Where is our money? he demanded.

Jobim’s head lolled in the collar of his tunic, He flinched in pain and refused to answer, biting his rich, full lips.

Tell me and I’ll save your life. I’ll get you to a hospital. Yearwood’s well-modulated voice grew ragged, echoes of a Brooklyn accent coarsened from the strain of unkeepable promises.

He crouched and ripped Jobim’s tunic open. Buttons skittered across the pale flagstones. Distress puckered Yearwood’s expression at the quantity of blood soaking his victim’s undervest.

We rebel . . . also . . . have most good friend in you company. Not sonbitch like you. Jobim was forced to gasp for breath, at first between his words and finally between each syllable. Most . . . good friend to . . . my people . . . help us get our country back . . . drive . . . drive . . .

Someone inside the company? A traitor? Who? he shouted at the dying man. Tell me!

Yearwood was an individual who loathed surprises and rarely encountered them because he micromanaged away all uncertainty before embarking on any mission. Jobim’s revelation provoked him into a state approaching recklessness.

I’ll see you get a decent burial. Provide for your family. Please, please. Give me his name. Her name. A clue. Just one initial.

Jobim’s lips contorted into a wobbly gash of triumph. His eyes slid upwards in their sockets.

Yearwood dropped to his knees and cradled Jobim’s head between them.

Jobim coughed hoarsely, sighed.

Oblivious to the blood staining his fine linen suit, Yearwood straddled the unbreathing man and forced his own breath through Jobim’s now pliant lips. Pressed the motionless chest.

To no avail.

He knew a hundred ways to terminate someone’s life but was a complete amateur at prolonging it.

After several minutes he rose, breathing heavily, disgusted by his own now bloody face and clothes.

He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket; he donned them and searched the room in an organized frenzy.

Jobim traveled light; Yearwood discovered little.

Camouflage clothes hanging in the closet. A cheap canvas bag under the bed. Nothing in it nor even space for secret compartments. A nylon shaving kit with Indonesian toiletries. A carton of clove cigarettes.

Yearwood stood in the center of the room, contemplating.

The light bulb continued to flicker with a dozen different shades of brightness. It animated Jobim’s cooling corpse with a peculiar ersatz simulation of life.

Suddenly inspired, Yearwood crossed to the bed and started to unroll the mosquito netting.

There was indeed a lump in the upper left hand corner. He withdrew a Damascus Laguiole knife from his pocket and slashed the netting away. A string-tied bundle fell out.

Yearwood cut the string with the knife and carefully separated the items.

Jobim’s billfold, fat with rupees. An Australian passport made out to Joseph Ng. An around-the-world plane ticket, originating in Port Moresby, and continuing through Goa, Frankfurt, London, New York, San Francisco and Honolulu.

One-half of a torn Asahi beer coaster.

It had to be the token Jobim would have presented to his contact. The traitor inside Yearwood’s firm who would possess the matching half.

Two Swiss passports in the names of Caspar and Judith Schütz.

So the traitor had an accomplice. According to the documents, Caspar was forty-one and his wife thirty-two. The passports were already colorful with visas and entry permits, but lacked photographs. There were also two plane tickets for Mr. and Mrs. Schütz, one-way from JFK to Dominica the following Wednesday evening. The same Wednesday Jobim had been scheduled to land in New York.

Yearwood returned to the passports and studied the blank spaces where the photographs were to go. He tried to visualize the faces the gaps might contain. His brow furrowed, his lips tightened from withheld curses.

At last, he broke away.

He took a plastic bag filled with grey clay-like material from his jacket pocket and removed it. He kneaded the mass until it was pliable. He then coated Jobim’s motionless face with oil from a small vial, rubbing it carefully from the fallen man’s brow to chin.

With an artist’s delicacy, Yearwood applied the grey substance to Jobim’s unbreathing features, shaping the material until an even layer spread from chin to scalp.

As Yearwood waited for the substance to harden into a striking death mask, he again studied the Schütz passports, the minimal clues to the turncoat or turncoats inside his organization.

His concentration was so intense that a dozen mosquitoes landed on his exposed flesh and, unmolested, feasted on his blood.

CHAPTER 1.

Lady Liberty

Bring a passport photograph but not your passport, Thomas Catherton Lockhart had instructed Meghan Joyce the previous week.

Which was easy because, like so many Americans, she never had one.

And a small carry-on with a few clean knickers and your favorite cosmetics, he continued. We’ll buy you a complete new wardrobe and whatever it is in all those bottles when we get there. We should be gone for three weeks.

He smiled the wry smile that so endeared him to her. Let us see how many shades of wonderful we can attain.

She had spent several days in a cycle of excitement. Of speculative eagerness as his words attenuated into feeling, then yet other bursts of happiness as she mentally replayed his instructions.

●

You have gorgeous red hair, a young banker proclaimed.

His smug voice disrupted Meghan’s reverie, and she tried to bring her surroundings back in focus: the grand ballroom of the Lady Liberty, a triple-decked party ship that plied the waters around Manhattan. On a seemingly endless circuit upon the Hudson and East Rivers, the vessel catered singles dances and corporate office parties. Although the Lady Liberty had all the charm of a chain motel, the tightly-knit crew was the closest Meghan had ever come to a family.

She turned her attention to the banker, finding it difficult to tell where the storm-aggravated yaw of the ship ended and his drunkenness began. Filaments of scotch sloshed from his glass onto his crimson stirrup tie.

He took her disorientation to mean that she had not heard the compliment and repeated it loudly. You have the most gorgeous red hair.

I’m afraid it’s tawny, Meghan corrected him.

Though its shade was closer to strawberry blonde, she had a redhead’s temper, especially when called one. Nevertheless, storms brought out forgiveness in her, and delicious anticipation of her impending rendezvous with Thomas rendered her giddily immune from suggestive overtures, even insults.

What? asked the banker, befuddled by her response.

Haven’t you ever heard the word ‘tawny’?

Like a lion? The banker could not have been older than twenty-five, but he ogled Meghan as if she were eighteen, a more than dozen years younger than she really was.

Exactly, she replied. But thanks for the compliment anyway.

When she spoke slowly, it was hard to tell that she had been born and spent most of her life in Queens. She wondered why it was that, until recently, the only men who ever seemed to find her attractive were either very drunk or very desperate.

With a swirl of black taffeta, she hurried away.

The banker called out half-coherent entreaties, his drink-flushed face turning a deeper pink.

Meghan resumed her hostess duties, smiling appropriately at the queasy guests, but her thoughts immediately returned to Thomas. Never in her life had she had anything to anticipate, neither holidays nor honors or anniversaries.

Until now.

Meghan was thirty-five years old and ground down by grim experience. By meeting so many jerks. By meeting seemingly nice men who later turned out to be jerks. By futilely pursuing secret jerks who did not wish to be pursued and remaining oblivious to their rebuffs. The more she tried to deny her desperation, the more desperate she had become.

Her outlook had not been improved by her happily married cousin Moira’s warning: if Meghan were not careful, she would soon reach the age when an unmarried woman was more likely to be struck by a meteor than find a sane and healthy unattached male.

Meghan had dismissed her cousin’s prophecy with an uneasy laugh.

Then suddenly Meghan was twenty-nine. Though she finally had a job that did not fill her with self-loathing, she had arrived at a drab plateau, filled with millions of other women, all searching for the same elusive Prince Charming. Women who had far more to offer, with whom she claimed no kinship beyond gender but who nevertheless provided a troubling projection of her own future. In a number of women several generations above her, she saw a trajectory of loneliness laid out before her. A life not uncomfortable, but fulfilling nothing in particular, until she passed into oblivion, isolated and unnoticed except for perhaps a pet cat or twenty.

As she shielded herself from the drunken revelry around her, Meghan realized her tolerance for solitude was now far greater than her tolerance for masculine idiocy. Fending for herself instilled an exhilarating independence. The gnawing and nagging doubt ceased, replaced by freedom to work on all the neglected aspects of herself. She felt as if she had been Mrs. Marley’s ghost, suddenly shedding massive iron chains of doubt and depression.

Life in Manhattan, cleansed of desperation, became joyous instead.

Her exalted state lasted only a few weeks, not to collapse, but instead to be elevated to a higher level.

Another banker, mojito in hand, staggering more from alcohol than from the sway of the boat, approached her.

Sensing his presence, she stared even more intently through the sliding glass doors onto the afterdeck.

Exactly one year ago, during a similar dinner cruise, she had met Thomas.

●

After three years working for the cruise line, Meghan had already been promoted to hostess.

The previous July, Captain Hofmeister, a ruddy man in his fifties, professionally crusty and personally warm, had informed her that the cruise that evening was for their most important Wall Street client.

To her, the cruise evening seemed like any other corporate event, the clientele wealthy, jejune, completely interchangeable, especially in their dismissal of the enormous effort the crew exerted into ensuring they enjoyed their affair.

Through the glass doors leading to the afterdeck, she had spotted Thomas, in tuxedo and cummerbund, perched absurdly atop the taffrail.

An impending storm was already spattering the deck. The breeze was light and the swell moderate, not enough to be dangerous, but enough to make his position precarious.

She had rushed out onto the stern. Listen, sweetheart, she cried out. Whatever you’re planning to do, you sure as hell aren’t going to do it on my ship, on my watch.

Thomas’s concentration made him oblivious to Meghan as he declaimed into the night. ‘My spirit’s bark is driven, far from the shore, far from the trembling throng, whose sails –’

His rich English baritone enchanted Meghan. Nevertheless, she grabbed his damp tuxedo coattails.

I can’t very well topple gracefully into the river, he protested, if you won’t let go of my tuxedo.

Meghan refused to release her grip.

You are not going to –

She yanked him back onto the deck with the force of an angry schoolmistress.

Thomas allowed himself to teeter back onto the deck. He stumbled and righted himself. Brushing his coat back into smoothness, he stared down, nearly a foot taller than she.

The George Washington Bridge, glowing behind him like a misty Gothic vision, granted his profile a chiseled jauntiness. Raindrops bejeweled his curly black hair.

– screw it up, Meghan managed to finish, her reprimand reduced to a mumble, her breath taken away by Thomas’s classic features.

He turned again to the Hudson.

‘– were never to the tempest given. The massy earth . . . ’ and then to Meghan. Shelley, you know.

Meghan swayed, unable to take her eyes off his face.

He paused, placing his hand on her arm. She felt her body tingle, as if some exotic electricity were coursing through her.

Are you unwell?

He seemed oblivious to her concern for his own safety.

I don’t know, Meghan mumbled.

Their roles reversed; she was now the tongue-tied schoolgirl.

There now. Relax, he reassured her. The wind’s calming.

Were you trying to commit suicide?

Even in the darkness she could see his wry, rueful smile, the mischievous sadness that would later so enthrall her.

Actually, no. But who’s to say the storm might not do it for me? he replied. Isn’t that what we all search for and never find? Blamelessness?

Why? She held his arm tightly and not merely to prevent him from climbing back up on the taffrail.

Drowning has such cachet and noble precedent – John Jacob Astor. Ophelia. The Gadarene Swine. Darling Clemen­tine. My fellow countrywoman, Virginia Woolf. Succored by the waters of oblivion. Honorably. Romantically. And especially our own dear Percy Bysshe.

"Why would someone who looks like they stepped off Gentleman’s Quarterly want to kill himself?"

Thomas glanced back through the sliding glass doors where his colleagues, oblivious, partied joyously.

He focused momentarily on someone inside – a tallish man with salt-and-pepper hair. But so many of the men at the party had the same description. Thomas’s face soured with a ripple of self-disgust.

One day you discover you have become one of those whom you despise and realize you’ll never be able to forgive yourself.

Anguished vulnerability eclipsed his height, his muscular frame, his sardonic assurance. She wondered what events could have driven him to the bleak precipice upon which she found him. Every nurturing impulse, every instinctive pulse of sympathy she felt for those who had been wounded and rejected by life swelled up within her, prompting a burst of speech.

Don’t. Please reconsider. I mean – I don’t know why. Not just because suicide is a cardinal sin. But . . .

She suddenly felt unsure of herself, confused between her instinct to protect this obviously vulnerable man and the surge of desire for someone so obviously comfortable to be with yet sophisticated.

I – I mean, New York would be a much worse – an emptier place without you, she declared, aware even as she spoke that the statement had no basis, and so she trailed off. At least to me it would,

Meghan was rarely effusive, and blushed whenever her emotions tricked her into volubility. She was grateful darkness concealed her embarrassment.

Thomas’s bearing softened as the Lady Liberty proceeded south. He sensed her concern and seemed quite struck that someone should be anxious about his well-being, as if it were a phenomenon that had never before occurred. He studied her in the faint glimmer of the lower Manhattan skyline, then said, Shall we go back inside, my dear?

Gallantly, he offered her his arm.

The wind rose, teasing whitecaps out of the roiling water as Thomas led her back through the sliding doors into the raucous party.

●

Meghan could not believe that the encounter had taken place exactly a year ago. She reached the forward sliding doors and stared out at the rainswept bow. If not for duties, decorum, and her rendezvous with Thomas in a few hours, she would shed her clothes and stand naked on the rail itself. A breathing Celtic figurehead, she would have invited the rain to pummel her until her spirit achieved union with the gale.

The Lady Liberty had threaded the tricky currents at Spuyten Duyvil and was steaming south, toward the George Washington Bridge, towards the spot of the first encounter with Thomas. Manhattan had disappeared in the squall. Not even the lightning sporadically fracturing the darkness could resurrect the island from its shroud of rain and fog.

She had never seen the Hudson this turbulent, nor whitecaps like the ones now surging over the gunwales. The possibilities of danger added a feral note to her reticent demeanor.

The singer and the bass player were seasick. The remaining three musicians were playing a valiant, lopsided rendition of Begin the Beguine, but the wind, shrieking through the outside railings, almost drowned it out. The dance floor was empty. Most of the bank employees huddled around their tables. A few of the braver ones ambled jerkily towards the bar, trying to outguess the roll of the ship as it listed from side to side.

Behind a stanchion huddled three secretaries, their arms intertwined in terror. An elderly woman nearing retirement, her gray hair clipped with bullet precision, and a tall woman in her twenties, with bright pink lipstick, gripped the African-American woman between them. The latter’s stoicism barely concealed her dread.

Meghan planted herself, legs apart, before them. She flung back her head, inhaling deeply. Smell the air! Feel the waves! Doesn’t this make you feel glorious?

I’m scared sick, quavered the elderly woman.

A flash of lightning blanched the faces of the fearful trio. A thunderclap made the ship shudder.

The young secretary yelped and clung even more tightly to her friend. It’s going to be okay, isn’t it? asked the woman in the middle.

As if it were the most intriguing fabric she had ever seen, Meghan scrutinized the sleeve of the young secretary’s gown. Patting the shoulder pad, she looked up triumphantly, Nori Tremayne!

Huh? asked the young woman.

You know. The designer.

The elderly woman, despite herself, volunteered, Is that a real Nori Tremayne?

No . . . I . . . the young secretary stammered. Do you like it?

I wouldn’t have guessed it was anything but, affirmed the woman in the middle, winking to Meghan as the latter slipped away.

I actually bought it at Bloomies.

As Meghan headed towards the musicians, she beamed at the uneasy passengers.

A tall man with commanding jowls, like the wattles of a turkey, pontificated to a subordinate whose face was tinted a dispirited green. Who knows if this damned scow’s even seaworthy?

Another wave slammed against the boat; wineglasses slid off tables and shattered. The underling appeared ready to bolt until Meghan patted his queasy shoulders.

Sure, it’s safer than Noah’s ark, Meghan reassured him.

The ark wasn’t built by union labor, the executive retorted.

That’s why it survived and was never found. Growing up surrounded by several generations of union men, she smiled her gracious, well-trained smile at him. Enjoy the storm. It’s going to be over soon.

Another flash of lightning, another thunderclap.

The jowled man gave her a chastened salute. Aye-aye, Ma’am.

The band was keeping one eye on their instruments and another on the tilting deck. It gave their music an intriguingly choppy rhythm.

Do you play The Anniversary Waltz? she asked the guitarist.

Of course. In deference to the night’s clientele, his usual blond dreadlocks had been unraveled and clipped back. Whose anniversary is it?

Mine, she replied over her shoulder, with a gentleness that felt almost gushy, but she could not help herself.

Didn’t even think you had a boyfriend.

She smiled enigmatically, pleased that she had managed to shield her private life from scrutiny and gossip. Thomas had not exactly proposed to her during their recent conversations, but he had hinted that very soon they might be in a position to spend a great deal of time together.

The band had played only three chords when an enormous wave slammed against the vessel.

The boat shuddered.

The engines sputtered.

Died.

Lights flickered.

They, too, died.

Only the last beats of the drummer could be heard. Then these also were drowned by panicked cries as the passengers realized the diesels had ceased. Silhouetted by winks of lightning, the western pier of the George Washington Bridge loomed closer and closer to the foundering vessel.

●

On the bridge, Captain Hofmeister, futilely spun the suddenly unresponsive wheel. Rudder’s not responding at all, he exclaimed.

The chief engineer, short, red-haired, with a Winston Churchill countenance and temperament, furiously manipulated levers and buttons on the frozen console.

Going to auxiliary power, he muttered.

The lights flickered, then came back on, though dimmer.

The massive concrete pier of the George Washington Bridge seemed to be accelerating toward the Lady Liberty. The engines sputtered and died.

Hofmeister reached for the microphone.

Your attention please. Your attention please, Hofmeister barked from the squawk box. Would the crew please assist all passengers to the foredeck and stand by for further instructions. Over.

Galvanized, Meghan leapt onto a table, maintaining her balance as wave after wave slammed against the vessel.

The perfect hostess was unobtrusive, deferential and reticent, which meshed well with her wish to be unobserved. Still, in contradiction to, or perhaps because of her aversion to display, within her simmered a yearning to be uninhibited, daring and extreme. Many safety drills had prepared her for this moment. Now the possibilities of danger thrilled her.

Quiet!

When few people obeyed, she stamped her foot with adrenaline-charged fury. I said ‘Quiet!’

As the frantic talk died down, she continued. In an orderly fashion we are going up on the upper deck. There we will await further instructions from our captain, who has been piloting this ship for twenty years. You will remain calm. You will let the person ahead of you go up without interference.

The engines sputtered hopefully, then failed again, their death mourned by the crowd’s wail.

Through the mist, Meghan could see an occasional wink of car headlights on the bridge high above them. No one panics. No one gets hurt.

Beside the table, the imperious man barked in a voice icy with command, You heard her. Do it.

People froze and immediately stopped talking as they jostled towards the companionway.

The man gave her his hand to assist her down from the table. Hurry, Mademoiselle Courageous. You go on up. For me it would be a dignified end.

That’s the one thing they never told me, she mused as she rushed over to join the crowd. Whether the hostess was supposed to go down with the ship.

The man smiled paternally and waved her onward.

The massive abutments of the bridge suddenly loomed through the mist in the ballroom windows. They seemed like movie sets, not monstrous structures of concrete and steel capable of smashing a fatal gash in the ship’s hull. Meghan had sailed near them over a hundred times, never noticing how solidly they’d been constructed.

She trembled with a flash of dread. If she drowned, how would Thomas know? Though he might consider drowning a noble exit, she could not help thinking it was an ignominious end. What reason would he have not to suspect that she had stood him up?

The crowd resumed murmuring as it surged up the companionway, an uneasiness that might easily grow into a panicked stampede.

Everything will be all right, Meghan shouted, keeping her attention on the young secretary on the step above her. When the woman spotted the abutments, she started to scream. Meghan hastily leapt up and cupped the woman’s mouth.

Suddenly the engines coughed into life. The vessel jerked toward starboard.

With inches to spare, the Lady Liberty steamed awkwardly beneath the high span. The passengers whooped and cheered. Their upward movement ceased. As they drifted down the companionway back into the ballroom, they, the men especially, assumed tones of sheepish nonchalance, as if they had never been frightened in the slightest.

When the Lady Liberty pulled into the dock at the end of West 41st, Meghan was so eager to see Thomas that she was barely able to linger by the gangplank to say her mechanical good-byes to the disembarking guests.

As the last guest, the wattle-jowled man passed by, he saluted her, Well, done, ma’am. Carry on.

He sauntered off to the waiting black car.

With a smile, Meghan collected her carry-on.

●

I heard you did an excellent job when we lost power, said Hofmeister as Meghan approached the gangplank.

She smiled at him. Thank you.

She took two steps before the meaning of his words dawned on her, then turned in surprise. Was that a compliment? Hey, you just paid me a compliment.

Have a nice vacation. The smile seemed out of place on his ruddy, craggy face. And be sure to come back.

CHAPTER 2.

Restaurant X

The cab dropped Meghan off at the corner